DODGING HEROIN'S BULLET

It wasn't the first time Irene had held a gun to someone's head.

But this time was different.

The man trembling at the barrel's end was a friend about to die because of
a $40 drug debt.

"A measly forty bucks," Irene says as she recalls her "moment of clarity."

After committing dozens of armed hold-ups, witnessing a family friend shot
dead, and beating up her mother, it was the barroom incident five years ago
that finally convinced Irene her heroin habit was out of control.

Now in her early 40s, Irene is hard-pressed to explain what was different
about the desperate moment that changed her life, and almost ended another.

Maybe the bar full of people, maybe the fact that it was a friend. Maybe
the "measly forty bucks."

Whatever it was, the next day Irene (not her real name) asked her doctor to
prescribe her methadone.

She hasn't used heroin since.

Today, instead of brandishing a gun, Irene carries college ID and the keys
to a Surrey office where she counsels people with drug problems.

Standing outside her Guildford apartment Thursday, clear-eyed and
well-spoken, she credits her dramatic lifestyle change to methadone.

Without it, her future was bleak.

"I know I'd be dead," she says, adding that methadone clinics made the
difference. She's upset that the city of Surrey last week restricted the
location of methadone clinics to hospitals, which in turn have indicated
they won't host one.

A city without a clinic is a recipe for disaster, she says.

"It was there I could get counselling. I could go there and I knew I was
being looked after by a professional doctor who knew about drug addiction."

Tears flow down her weathered cheeks as she describes how the self-loathing
that fueled her addiction slowly evolved into a sense of purpose. The
rewards of sobriety, she says - among them family, friends, school and
career - are too numerous to list.

Irene stayed on the methadone program for a year, stabilized, and then
weaned herself off the drug. About one-in-five people are able to do that
successfully; the rest are on methadone for life.

As grateful as she is to the methadone program, and the clinics that
provided it and the associated services, Irene doesn't want the public to
know that she has used methadone.

"They'd use it against me," she fears.

Methadone remains one of the most highly stigmatized drug programs
available. Those who work 12-step programs, such as Alcoholics Anonymous
and Narcotics Anonymous, abstain completely from drugs. Purists believe
true recovery can only occur with total abstinence from all narcotics, and
that methadone is merely replacing one drug with another.

That's exactly what addiction specialist Dr. Ray Baker believed 10 years
ago, when he joined the B.C. Medical Association's committee on addiction
intending to "run the methadone program out of the province."

Baker found himself on a steep learning curve.

"Unfortunately I was forced to read the literature and the science," Baker
says. "So I no longer had the bliss of certainty due to ignorance."

Science, Baker says, leaves no room for argument. Without methadone, those
people would have been dead in five years.

"That's been proven time and time again," says Baker, who was recently
named to the province's task force on drug addiction.

In recent years, Baker has met many methadone patients who are "normal,
functional members of society."

North Delta residents John and Wendy (not their real names) are examples of
how methadone patients can blend seamlessly into the work force.

Wendy is an office administrator and John helps run a successful
construction company.

Without methadone, John and Wendy say they'd be back on heroin, out of
work, and stealing for a living.

Perhaps most importantly, Wendy says, she'd lose her 10-year-old son.

When he was three, her son sat on the bed beside her when she was in the
throes of heroin withdrawal and said, "Mom, why don't you stop?"

It was then Wendy started trying to quit.

She's had "slips" where she has turned back to the heroin, but is now six
months clean.

James and Wendy agree with Irene's claims about the importance of methadone
clinics in the delivery of the drug. Local doctors no longer take methadone
patients, they say, adding the clinics are an addict's best and only hope.

James cringes when he hears Surrey council voted to restrict methadone
clinics to hospitals.

The number of heroin addicts embroiled in their addiction is going to
increase, he predicts, shaking his head.

"Oh boy, are we going to have some fun in Surrey."